Just when it appeared that California lawmakers would succeed in producing a budget for fiscal year 2011-2012 prior to the constitutional deadline of July 1, Governor Jerry Brown's veto of a package favored by Democrats has, once again, plunged the state into budget limbo.  The Governor released a YouTube message accompanying the veto, which can be viewed, here.  The text of Mr. Brown's veto message can be accessed, here.

  

The Governor had harsh words for both parties.  He was explicit in criticizing Republican lawmakers for blocking attempts to permit voters to determine whether temporary increases to the state sales tax, income tax, and vehicle registration fees should be extended for an additional five years.  Shortly after taking office, Mr. Brown proposed a balanced budget that was contingent upon the extension of the tax increases that are set to expire this summer.  In his veto message, he minced no words in stating that "...Republicans in the Legislature blocked the right of the people to vote on this honest, balanced budget."

  

While attempting to soften his criticism by noting that his fellow Democrats had made "valiant efforts to address California's budget crisis by enacting $11 billion in painful cuts and other solutions," Mr. Brown offered the following rebuke: "Unfortunately, the budget I have received is not a balanced solution. It continues big deficits for years to come and adds billions of dollars of new debt. It also contains legally questionable maneuvers, costly borrowing and unrealistic savings. Finally, it is not financeable and therefore will not allow us to meet our obligations as they occur."

  

Should lawmakers fail to enact a balanced budget, the state will be unable to proceed with its annual multibillion-dollar sale of revenue anticipation notes - a practice that provides an early injection of cash for continuing state operations.  In 2009, similar circumstances led to the issuance of state IOUs.  Financial analysts have commented that impaired liquidity could further undermine California's credit rating.

 

Legislators are already feeling a personal pinch.  In a controversial decision, State Controller John Chiang announced that state lawmakers' pay would be docked for each day they fail to pass a balanced budget.  "My office's careful review of the recently-passed budget found components that were miscalculated, miscounted or unfinished," said Chiang. "The numbers simply did not add up, and the Legislature will forfeit their pay until a balanced budget is sent to the Governor."

 

Both Assembly Speaker John Perez, and Senate Leader Darrell Steinberg expressed dismay over the governor's veto, the first of its kind in modern state history.  "Over the last six months we have moved heaven and Earth to pass the governor's plan," said Mr. Perez, adding that the vetoed budget was "...the best hope California had for economic recovery."  Meanwhile, Republican legislative leaders are conditioning their support for "revenue extensions" to the enactment of various pension reforms and the establishment of a hard spending cap on state expenditures.

 

The looming budget crisis subjects the state's public schools to considerable uncertainty.  Last month's announcement that the state had collected $6.6 billion above projected revenues raised hopes among school districts that layoffs could be averted, or substantially reduced.  The budget that was vetoed, however, would have reduced the K-12 spending level proposed in the Governor's May revision by several billion dollars.  Some districts have already enacted staff reductions, while others are holding their breath while waiting to see whether the governor can succeed in cutting a deal with Republicans that would provide approximately $2 billion in "bridge tax" funds intended to stabilize school and public safety spending prior to a statewide ballot on tax extensions.

 

Stay tuned! 

When the No Child Left Behind Act was signed into law in early 2002, states were given until 2014 to see that public school students had achieved 100% proficiency in reading and math.  Each state submitted a plan to the U.S. Department of Education, mapping out its anticipated yearly progress toward the realization of that lofty goal.  Schools that failed to demonstrate "adequate yearly progress" were labeled as being "in need of improvement."  Schools falling into this category for a successive number of years - often designated as "chronically failing" in the popular lexicon - became subject to a variety of increasingly intrusive "corrective actions." 

  

The 100 percent proficiency requirement proved to be the single most controversial element in the landmark federal education law.  At the time of its passage, 2014 appeared to be a long way off, and no one wished to write off any of the groups whose scores on standardized achievement tests were about to be reported in disaggregated form.  Instead, states sought various ways to game the system.

  

Believing that the 100 percent proficiency provision would be struck from the law, or substantially modified, many states simply back-loaded their adequate yearly progress projections.  As an example, the red line on this chart provides a visual depiction of California's adequate yearly progress targets for English Language Arts.  Note that after five years of implementation, fewer than a quarter of all students were projected to have achieved proficiency.  Thereafter, the line moves upwards at a steep angle.  State school officials were, undoubtedly, betting that a new president and congress would amend or rewrite the law before large numbers of schools became subject to its unpopular remedies.

  

They were wrong.  We are now approaching the second half of 2011.  A new president occupies the White House, and there have been four Congressional elections since the current version of the bill was signed into law.  While No Child Left Behind now goes by a different name - the generic Elementary and Secondary Education Act - its 100 percent proficiency requirement remains steadfastly in place.  Which poses a problem with which President Obama would prefer not to be faced.

  

Despite the Administration's attempts to spur Congress toward a rewrite of the law - an achievement that is currently more than two years overdue - it now appears unlikely that a reauthorization will occur prior to the beginning of the coming school year, as Mr. Obama had hoped.  And with numerous pundits opining that it will prove difficult to reauthorize the law during an election year, it appears that Secretary of Education Arne Duncan is resorting to "Plan B."  Citing Section 9401 of the law, Mr. Duncan claims his office possesses the authority to offer waivers to states agreeing to accept an as-yet-to-be-specified basket of reforms.  The waivers would release states from the law's existing accountability provisions. 

  

Mr. Duncan's "Plan B" has already encounted resistance, including skepticism expressed by some key Obama Administration  congressional allies.  This Politics K-12 article reports that California Representative George Miller has publicly declared a preference for reauthorization over waivers. 

  

Criticism from other quarters has been sharper.  The American Enterprise Institute's Rick Hess writes:  "So, let me get this straight. After barely convincing Congress to keep Race to the Top on life support, Duncan is intent on unilaterally pushing his same pet priorities through the back door? He's planning to offer regulatory relief only if states adopt reforms that are utterly absent in the relevant legislation? Facing backlash on the right and left over concerns that the administration coerced states to embrace test-driven teacher evaluation and the Common Core through Race to the Top, Duncan's strategy is to double down?" 

  

Social Networking Comes to CAPE

  

  

California's state legislature may not be the most decisive, but a recent study reported by the Chronicle of Higher Education has determined that it's the smartest.  According to this Sacramento Bee story, 90 percent of California's legislators hold at least a bachelors degree, and 20 percent possess a law degree.  The five states with the most educated legislatures are (in descending order): California, Virginia, Nebraska, New York, and Florida.  The five states with the least educated legislatures, as judged by the possession of college degrees, are (in descending order): Arizona, South Dakota, Kansas, Montana, and Arkansas (where 25 percent of the state legislators did not attend college). 

  

Assembly Speaker John Perez is not among the 90 percent of current state legislators who possess a bachelors degree.  It was recently disclosed that while Mr. Perez' designation as a UC Berkeley graduate went unchallenged for over a decade, the Speaker never graduated from the UC's flagship campus.

  

  

  

  

Tomorrow, thousands of teachers will gather in Chicago to particpate in the National Education Association's Annual Meeting and Representative Assembly.  During the course of the six-day event, the NEA delegates will vote to adopt a myriad of resolutions that spell out the public policies to be advanced and/or resisted by the political powerhouse.

  

For the 14th consecutive year, the Education Intelligence Agency's Mike Antonucci will provide his unique brand of gavel-to-gavel, on-site reporting of, and commentary on the event.  Mr. Antonucci's reports can be found on his Intercepts blogsite.  It is anticipated that the major topic of discourse will revolve around efforts in various states to limit the scope of collective bargaining involving public employee unions.

  

To obtain some sense of the political muscle possessed by the NEA and its state affiliates, take a quick look at this table showing revenue and staff information for 2008-09.  In that year, combined revenues received by the NEA and its affiliates amounted to a staggering $1.5 billion dollars.  That billion, with a "B."  NEA headquarters in Washington, DC, employed a staff of 676 people.  By way of comparison, although 10 percent of all students in grades K-12 receive their education in private schools, the Council for American Private Education maintains a staff of two. 

  

The NEA's California state affiliate, the California Teachers Association, received nearly $179 million in dues revenue in 2008-09, and employed a staff of 597.  While CAPSO doesn't collect dues from private school teachers (who, in 2008-09 accounted for 12.5 percent of the state's total K-12 teaching force), we do our best to lobby on behalf of equity for private school teachers when we encounter legislation proposing benefits for public school teachers, only.  CAPE's staff is double that of CAPSO. 

  

When an organization possesses the vast resources available to the NEA, it is able to assemble a superb team of lobbyists, and it is often instructive to study the documents it produces.  One current masterpiece can be found in the form of this recent letter, sent by the NEA to members of the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce, as the committee was about to consider H.R. 2218 a bill that would augment federal support for the expansion of charter schools.  Consider the following paragraph:

  

  

I suggest that those in the private school community take a charitable view of the NEA letter.  After all, are we any less conflicted when it comes to the expansion of charter schools?  Is it any less true for us that in the instance of charter schools, what we support in theory can hurt us in actual practice? 

  

Yet, while we may feel similarly conflicted, the manner in which we seek to resolve the tension is radically different.  Where the NEA seeks a curtailment of alternatives available to parents, both in number and in kind, we tend to support an expansion of alternatives that includes traditional public schools, magnets, charters, home schools, and private religious and independent schools.  I suppose the real nature of the conflict some of us may feel comes down to this: it sure would be easier to support the exercise of choice when it comes to any one form of schooling, if choice were expanded to include all forms of schooling.

  

Ron Reynolds